


Many Happy Returns

by msgenevieve



Category: Prison Break
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon, Character Death, F/M, Happy Ending, Het, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-20
Updated: 2008-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:36:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msgenevieve/pseuds/msgenevieve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unfortunately, the only way to learn not to take something for granted is the hard way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Many Happy Returns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linzi20](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=linzi20).



> Skips from Season One right through to one of the many post-series alternate universes in my head. Contains dialogue from "Sleight of Hand" that does not belong to me in any way, shape or form.

~*~

 

On Sara Tancredi's twenty-eight birthday, her father sends her a bunch of daffodils so big it takes her twenty minutes to find a container big enough to hold them. The day after her birthday, they have a telephone conversation that starts with him announcing he’s organised a job interview for her at a private clinic and ends with both of them hanging up furious with each other. Carelessly dashing away angry tears with the heel of her palm, she turns her back on the ridiculously huge bunch of yellow and green stems before giving Katie a brittle smile.

“Who’s my two o’clock?”

Obviously knowing better than to mention the flowers or the tears, Katie swiftly checks her clipboard. “Lincoln Burrows.”

Sara takes a steadying breath, then another, feeling her frayed nerves calm. She's just informed her father she can do more good by working at Fox River in one day than she could at any fancy private clinic in a year, and her next patient is the perfect example. “Bring him in.”

 

~*~

 

On her twenty-ninth birthday, Michael Scofield uses her father’s latest floral tribute - a collection of pink-hued wildflowers this year - to distract her from asking questions about his wounded foot. Later, she wonders if she would have been so readily distracted if she hadn’t imagined a note of suspicion in his tone when he uttered the word _admirer_.

Her face growing warm, she doesn’t look at him or the flowers as she replies, watching her hands bandage his left foot as though they’re the most fascinating thing she’s ever seen. “They’re from my father.”

“Ah.” If she didn’t know better, she might think he sounds relieved. “What’s the occasion?”

“It’s my birthday.”

“Today?” He sounds surprised, as though the idea of her celebrating her birthday by coming to work at Fox River would never have occurred to him.

“Um-hmm.” She still can’t bring herself to look at him, which is quite ridiculous, given the fact she’s been able to look him in the eye every day for several weeks now.

It takes him a moment to reply, and when he does, any lingering trace of suspicion in his voice is gone, replaced by a subtle warmth that flutters over her skin as surely as if he’s reached out and touched her. “Happy Birthday.”

“Thank you.” She keeps her own tone clipped and careful, doing her best to ignore the unexpected and unwanted spike in her pulse.

Once again, it takes him a moment to answer her. “Okay,” he finally drawls, sounding as though he’s just realised the punchline to his joke has gone straight over a friend’s head.

The word _friend_ reverberating in her head, she glances up at him as she pulls off her latex gloves, knowing to prolong this conversation could be unwise, knowing she’s going to do it anyway. “Hmmm?”

His impossibly vivid eyes widen, his mouth curving in a sheepish grin that suddenly makes him look ten years younger. “Nothing.” She meets his gaze steadily, the spike in her pulse steadying into an accelerated rhythm, and he shrugs. “Birthdays aren’t usually a sore subject, that’s all.” He tilts his head to study her and she instinctively turns back to her paperwork, her fingers tightening around her ballpoint pen. “Unless the celebrant is feeling her age,” he adds in a slow, deliberate drawl, and even without lifting her eyes she knows he’s still watching her. “Which I don’t see how you could be.”

Confused by the pleasure that washes over her at the unspoken compliment, she clears her throat and gives up the pretence at making intelligent case notes on his file. “I’m twenty-nine years old, Michael,” she tells him as she swivels her chair to face him. “I’m not _feeling my age_.”

A knowing smile plays about his mouth, as though this is exactly the reaction he was hoping to provoke, but he says nothing. He simply looks at her, waiting, and to her utter surprise, she finds herself telling him something that she’s only ever told a handful of other people. “It’s just out of those twenty-nine birthdays, my father has managed to see me on precisely six of them.” She shouldn’t be telling him this, shouldn’t ever give an inmate any personal information they could later use to their advantage. And yet she can’t make herself stop. She flips to the next page of his file, determinedly noting the condition of his sutures. “So I get flowers instead, flowers that end up dead and in the trash a week later.” She pauses, not looking up at him as she lets silence fall between then, ushering in the sounds of the mishmash of human incarceration that makes up the backdrop of her daily life. Letting the noises remind her of where she is. Who _he_ is. “Sounds bitter, huh?”

“Kind of.”

His wistful tone makes something tighten in the pit of her stomach, and she knows it’s time to bring this visit to an end. “It’s not a big deal,” she lies to him briskly, snapping the cap back onto her pen. “You’re all set, I will see you tomorrow.”

Dismissed, he slides off the gurney without another word and walks towards the door with the graceful stride she’s wished more than once she’d never noticed. Swallowing hard, she starts to review the notes she’s just made, but she barely finishes the first line before he speaks. “I’m sorry you feel that way.” She looks up to find him standing in the doorway, watching her with something that looks a lot like empathy. “About the flowers, I mean.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, and she’s glad, because she has none to give him. When he’s gone, she stares at the flowers on her desk and wonders how it can be that a man she barely knows seems to care more about her being unhappy on her birthday than her own father does.

 

~*~

 

On her thirtieth birthday, Michael Scofield holds her hand as they stand in the middle of a cemetery in Chicago. The riot of white lilies and roses he’d given her that morning are now spilled across the gleaming marble of her father’s headstone, their scent far less cloying now they’re out in the open, rather than a stuffy hotel room.

Still faintly ashamed of her less-than-enthusiastic reaction to finding them beside the bed when she’d opened her eyes, she offers him yet another apologetic smile. “I’m sorry about this morning.”

His hand tightens around hers. “It doesn’t matter,” he says lightly, and she knows he means it. He studies the engraving on the headstone carefully for a long moment, his gaze narrowed against the glare of the bright morning sun. “I’m glad you decided to bring them here.”

“You knew I’d turn my nose up at them, and you gave them to me anyway.” She closes her eyes as she leans against him, finding comfort in the solid warmth of his presence. “Why?”

He exhales loudly. “If your father were alive,” he says in a voice so quiet she has to strain to hear him, “he would have moved heaven and earth to send you flowers today, no matter where in the world you were.”

Her throat tightens, and she realises taking her father’s annual gift for granted is a bitter pill she’s going to have to swallow for the rest of her days. “I know.”

“When you said you wanted to come here today,” he murmurs as he finally turns to face her, “I thought flowers might be a good thing this time." He gives her a lopsided smile that makes her heart lurch. "Even if you didn't want them for yourself.”

Her eyes prickling hotly with tears, she briefly mourns the fact that the two men she loves most in this world never had the chance to meet, then shakes away her dark thoughts as best she can. “Thank you for being here with me.”

He reaches up and curls his hand around the nape of her neck, his touch as warm as the early morning sunshine. “Where else would I be?”

 

~*~

 

On the morning of her thirty-first birthday, she rearranges the scarlet native flowers in their makeshift vase for the third time. Finally satisfied she's achieved the point of _just right_ , she makes her way outside and around to the front of the house. Finding a shady spot, she buries her toes in the cool sand and gazes down at the beach, smiling as she idly watches LJ and his father bicker amiably over the right way to erect the volley ball net.

Lazily contemplating the seemingly never-ending expanse of glittering blue water, she starts at the feel of Michael’s arms sliding around her waist, then relaxes back against him. “You realise it’s going to be two against one out there until I’m back in fighting form,” she tells him, nodding towards his brother and nephew on the beach.

She feels his shoulders shrug against hers, his hands coming up to rest on the rounded swell of her belly. “Ah, but I’ll have three on my team soon,” he replies, his words infused with such laughter and pride that they seem to float away into the salt-tinged air, “and if genetics are anything to go by, she’ll be tall enough to do some major damage to Team Burrows in no time.”

She tilts her head backwards to look at him, the gentle scrape of his whiskered chin against her jaw making her shiver despite the heat. “She?”

“Hmmm.” He presses a soft kiss to her temple, his lips curving in a slow smile against her skin. “It will annoy Linc more if he’s beaten by a girl.”

 

~*~


End file.
